Developers Move Quickly to Embrace Hadoop - Slide 10

As the newest technology on the block for managing data, curiosity in Hadoop is naturally high.

A new study of 102 Hadoop developers conducted by Karmasphere, a provider of technology that makes Hadoop accessible to developers skilled in traditional programming tools such as SQL, finds that most Hadoop projects in the enterprise are developer experiments.

But the study also found that internal IT organizations are embracing many of those projects as they try to come up with methods to analyze larger amounts of data.

According to Karmasphere CEO Martin Hall, there are two trends driving the adoption of Hadoop in the enterprise. The primary trend is that IT organizations are collecting more data than ever, exceeding the limits of traditional database technology. The second is that many companies are uncomfortable making business decisions bases on samples of data. Hadoop provides an architecture that allows them to more flexibly analyze more data, which leads to better business decisions.

Of course, Hadoop is also benefitting from hype generated by Web 2.0 companies such as Google and Facebook that have embraced this approach to data management.

But it’s clear that Hadoop also is quickly gaining acceptance in mainstream enterprises. Hall argues that this adoption will be furthered by tools such those offered by Karmasphere because developers don’t have the time or inclination to master new technologies such as the MapReduce interface created to access data stored in Hadoop.

Cost also factors into the adoption rate. As an open source technology, the cost of experimenting with Hadoop is negligible. And many companies want to reduce their SQL database costs, especially for analytic applications.

Of course, the study finds that there are plenty of issues that need to be overcome when adopting Hadoop. But when you put all these factors together, it still clearly shows a level of momentum for Hadoop in enterprise that may have ramifications in the world of data management and analytics for years to come.